HDRI Bitmap changes to Corona Bitmap

[Darawork]

Hi, my first post.

Been using Corona render with 3DSMax 2016 for a few months now. We do Architectural CGIs.

We've been trying to create and use an Environment Template file scene saved for use with every new scene. This office template file scene has a HDRI Bitmap, and a Corona sun. The sun target linked to the sun and the Sun rotation linked to the HDRIs Sun location. This is fine, it works like the tutorial video says it will. Great.

Until we try to merge a completed 3D scene into it. It seems to always change the HDRI environment Bitmap to a Corona Bitmap. This causes the wire link to unlink, due to the HDRI now having no translated UVW offsets to link to. So, it has to be changed back to a Standard Bitmap HDRI manually by hand each time, and relink the wire.

Also, doing a Corona Converter process will sometimes also change the HDRI Bitmap to Corona Bitmap. It's hard to tell when it happens, but it does and often.

The downfall of using a Corona Bitmap for an Environment map is that at render time, or interactive, the machine will lock up until 97% of the RAM fills up (32Gb btw) and only then does the Corona error log pop up its 'low system resources error'. When changing the Environment HDRI back to a non corona Bitmap the system fast again.

Can anyone help me out? I'd ideally like to lock the Environment as it, permanently, regardless of what other operations we perform in the scene. It is never helpful for Corona to convert Environment image types.

Even when using the Corona Converter dialogue button 'Standard Bitmap - > Corona Bitmap', It would be idea if the Environment stayed the way it was initially.

Any tips? I'm at home now, so I can't give exact version numbers, but I know it's 1.7 for the engine, and one version below the latest Converter.

Thanks a million,
Dara 🙂

[maru]

Strange... I do not see any reason why the Max Bitmap would convert to a Corona Bitmap by itself in any case.
Maybe this is because of using the converter script, or maybe it is somehow automatically used when opening/merging files in your company?
I am sending a screenshot with the options responsible for the CBitmap>MaxBitmap conversion in the script.